Left 2 Die
by mbulsht
Summary: Nobody's sure where it all started. The Forever War. Project Gaia. The Pandora Strain. The only thing anybody knew for sure was that Happy Tree Town was ground zero. And at the center of the carefully hidden dark plan: a mysterious black squirrel.
1. Prelude

A/N: Alright, this one's been in the planning stages for like a year now. Since it will be part of a large series that spans more than one fandom, it has been written in such a way that even those with little to no knowledge of Happy Tree Friends can still read and enjoy it. Those who know and love HTF will find it entertaining as well (at least, I hope so!!!).

So, before I begin, let's talk credits. Firstly, this is based in the Happy Tree Friends universe, which I do not own. Much of the first story arc is based on the following things (which I also do not own): Left 4 Dead (in case you couldn't tell already), Half-Life (the video game), 28 Days Later, The Walking Dead (graphic novel), I Am Legend (the movie), and the video game Dead Space. For those of you who are madly trying to point out that all of these things involve zombies, congratulations. You're nerds.

The second story arc is basically the plot of one of my other fics, entitled "Coming of the Green Bear."

The third story arc has themes taken from Final Fantasy VII and the movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. I've also sprinkled elements of the game Bioshock in here, as well as other parts.

Throughout this fic, I will base plot devices, themes, and sometimes even whole scenes and bits of dialogue from games and movies and stuff. See if you can catch all my references.. It can be a fun game!!! (yay~!)

That's it, I guess.

Read, review, flame, whatever. I don't particularly care. I like squirrels.

**

* * *

****Prelude:**

_Monday, 22nd June, 2009, time unknown  
__2 weeks after first infection  
Location Unknown_

Flippy opened his eyes.

This in itself was quite a feat. It felt, at first, as though some invisible force was keeping them closed, before he realized that it was dried tears that glued his eyelids shut. He wondered why this was momentarily, before coming to full senses. Wrenching his eyes open, he surveyed the scene before him. As he took in his surroundings, and assessed his own physical well being, he became aware of two things.

Firstly, he had no idea where he was. As he looked around, the only thing he could see in all directions was a blank whiteness; a solid area of nothing, broken only by a single metal table that sat in front of him. But then, he couldn't really see beyond his peripheral vision. His head wouldn't move.

And that was the second thing he noticed; that he couldn't move his head. Or any other part of his body, for that matter. At all. From what he could feel, he seemed to be suspended in what felt like a solid piece of concrete. Yet somehow, he could breathe and see. And it appeared he was suspended a few feet above the ground. It was like he was in one of those nightmares, where you were forced to watch something you couldn't look away from, and were unable to move or do anything about it.

Flippy thought for a moment. The last thing he remembered was an explosion. That was for sure. Working his mind as hard as he could, he tried to remember more. He had been with Cuddles. They had been doing something... something important.

Then it all came back to him. The city, the monsters, his escape with the yellow bunny, and the explosion at the military complex.

But all thoughts were brushed aside when he heard the distinct sound of a door opening and closing to his right. Though he could not turn his head, he stretched his eyeballs to their limits, trying to see where the noise had come from.

Then there came a rather loud set of footsteps that echoed throughout, as though the vast whiteness were a large auditorium with a wooden floor, and the two noisemaking feet were clad in expensive shoes. Flippy strained more, if such were possible, to see the source of this sound.

And then, out of the very corner of his eye, walked the creature he had come to know about, but not to know.

It was the black squirrel.

The creature he had seen but glimpses of, many times. The creature who had always seemed one step ahead of him, moving with some unknown purpose. The squirrel always who wore a blue business-like suit and carried a briefcase.

And always had that odd crooked smile.

It was the kind of smile that was laced with an air of superiority. A smirk that told the onlooker that the wearer felt he was far more important to everything around him.

An arrogant smile.

"Mr. Flippy," said the squirrel, his voice echoing in the whiteness. "I must admit, you never cease to amaze me."

Flippy narrowed his eyes as the black squirrel walked slowly up to him. The squirrel looked up at Flippy, for he was raised above the ground, and smiled that smile.

God, Flippy hated that look.


	2. The Hospital

A/N: It might be a good idea to pay attention to the date and time.... I might jump around sometimes.

* * *

PART ONE: LEFT 2 DIE  
CHAPTER ONE: "The Hospital"

_8:00pm, Monday, 9__th__ June, 2009__  
2 days after first infection  
Location: Mercy Hospital_

* * *

Flippy opened his eyes.

It was a familiar scene that met his gaze as everything around him came into focus. He was staring up at a perfectly white ceiling that had no flaws whatsoever. Breathing deeply through his nose, he attempted to take in the scent of the room around him. He concluded with a single word: clean. The room smelled clean. And that wrapped up everything; he knew exactly where he was. He was in that godforsaken building. That hospital that just always looked and smelled so _perfectly clean. _ And upon this realization, he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed he was lying in. The fact that he was in a bed confirmed it. He was in Mercy Hospital.

"God damn it."

He muttered the words under his breath. Flippy hated that hospital. And it wasn't one of those irrationally arbitrary hatreds that some creatures had against things. It wasn't the perfect smell, or the moans and groans of patients, or even the damned _name_ of the place. No, Flippy's loathing of the hospital was set on a very simple reason:

It was his place of death.

Well, not exactly. Flippy rubbed his eyes, taking a moment to stroll amiably down Memory Lane. Recalling what his current best friend had told him in the past, he stood up and walked to the door.

_I guess the best way to say it is, we're immortal._ Flippy heard the words of Cuddles in his head. Cuddles had sat down with Flippy that day, over six years ago, and explained everything to him. About the town, its history, and the creatures living in it. But most of all, he had talked about the city's_  
(curse! The city's fucking curse-)_  
strange affliction, and the apparent immortality of its citizens.

_So, like, you never die?_ Flippy had asked. And Cuddles replied with a shake of his head. _No, that's not it,_ the rabbit had said. _It's not really 'immortality,' it's more like.... 'timelessness.' We die all the time. We just..._

"We just come back," Flippy finished memory-Cuddles' words.

Looking over at the calendar on the wall, he noted that he'd been out for over two days.

"Musta been one helluva death."

Flippy reached the door of the room with the bed (it was just an examination room, nothing special) and leaned against the doorway. With a shudder, he felt his stomach heave. And with little more than a slight gurgling sound, he bent over became violently sick. When at last his stomach had little left to give out, and that disgusting feeling he had passed, he stood up straight and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Then he pushed off from the doorway with one paw and began making his way down the hall, leaving behind a pile of vomit on the floor. It didn't really matter; sooner or later some nurse would happen by it, and, with a shake of her head, proceed to clean it up without complaint. These things were common in a hospital. And besides, it was a good thing. Vomiting meant he was still alive. Meant his body was still working. That was good, right?

"Depends on your opinion of a 'good thing,'" Flippy said, absently carrying on a conversation with himself.

He really hated that hospital. With a passion.

Closing his eyes, Flippy tried to remember this most recent death. This was always a struggle for him. Dying left the mind rather fuzzy. But with a little effort he conjured up the memories of his previous life. He recalled some sort of flash of light, and a pain in his side. Gunshot, perhaps? Then it came to him. Light from a window. A windshield, to be exact. Flippy only had time to see that it was a pickup truck.

"Car accident," me muttered. "Who's car? Hmm... Lumpy's, maybe. Owns a pickup. And he's stupid enough to drive up on the sidewalk. I told him he needs to drive carefully, but no. Doesn't listen. Doesn't pay attention. I'll kill him. Stupid idiot."

Then, the last thing he remembered after that, was waking up in Mercy Hospital. It was where he went after he died. Though it was still unexplained how this worked (the process was inexplicable at best), Flippy always found himself in the same examination room in the same hospital every time he died. That was his return point. His "respawn point," Cuddles had joked. Except it wasn't really very funny. The two of them had laughed about it, oh yes, they had laughed. But it was that kind of laughter you produce when you don't want to think about how truly disturbing something is.

But of all places, why did his return point have to be the hospital? Why couldn't he come back somewhere more convenient, like his own house? And besides, the hospital was a place for saving lives. Where people went when they were sick, not dead. Dead people were taken _from _hospitals, not _to_ them. It felt like he was part of some bizarre joke that the Powers That Be themselves had come up with, and were laughing at Flippy's expense. A Divine Comedy. Ha, ha. Very funny. Good use of irony, you bastards. Hilarious.

"It's a God-damned riot, alright."

Flippy continued to mutter darkly to himself as he stumbled along the hall, towards the exit. It was a route he knew well. He was used to it, after all. Shuffling sleepily (a symptom of his recent resurrection), he made his way towards the green sign that led outside to the_  
(curse! The city's fuc-)_  
city streets.

Flippy shook his head. Already six years it had been since he'd gotten rid of that dark passenger within himself, and still voices whispered in his head, slipping themselves between his thoughts. He knew they weren't real, that they were simply memories forcing their way to the forefront of his mind, but they still bore an uncomfortable resemblance to Jack._  
(Hey, buddy! Wanna have some fun?)_  
There it was again. It wasn't Jack, just the memory of his voice. But it was enough to make Flippy shudder violently, and feel sick again. Once more Flippy shook his head to clear his thoughts. Thinking about Jack wasn't a stroll down Memory Lane. Hardly. It was being dragged through the dirty, bloodstained back alleyways of Horror Town. Just remembering, just thinking, could make Flippy's hair stand on end.

Flippy stopped his drunken walk towards the exit to lean heavily on the wall. He took a moment to push thoughts of the past out of his head. Sighing, he put his paw on the wall and bent over to breathe deeply, trying to calm himself. It would do no good to dwell on the past, and he knew this. He was just having some trouble taking control of his own mind. His own overactive imagination. After all, he had just come back from the dead. It stood to reason that his mind wasn't in perfect working order. Flippy snickered at this thought. He'd like to see anyone else die and come back perfectly fit and fine.

His thoughts were interrupted when he realized abruptly that he had put his paw on something warm and sticky.

At first he thought that some other recently back-from-the-dead poor bastard had emptied his stomach in a horizontal fashion across the wall. But this theory was dispelled when he noticed that the liquid under his paw was devoid of the chunks that were characteristic of vomit. Sighing heavily with resignation, he pulled his paw away. Looking down to inspect it, he gasped and jumped back.

Across the wall was a fresh splash of blood.

The sight of the blood was like an electric shock to Flippy. Gasping for breath, he fell against the opposite wall. Adrenaline coursed through his veins and he fought hard to quell the beating of his racing heart. He heard distant sounds of gunfire and knew that it was just his imagination forcing its violent images and sounds upon him.

He hated this. He hated the sounds. The sights. It had been this way for six years. Six long years.

"God-damned war. God-damned everything. I hate it all."

It could be anything. A small amount of blood. A sudden loud sound. Anything that could startle him, remind him of every battle and bullet-scarred second of his time in the war. Anything, and he'd be like this; like a scared child cowering in the corner of their bed, fearing the shadows in the night. And with every fiber of his being, he loathed it.

Slowly, ever so slowly, his heart quit its panicked spasms and his lungs calmed.

When at last he felt like he could stand on his own again, he pushed away from the wall.

At least his attacks weren't so dangerous anymore. Not like they were when Jack was around. With Jack, they had been worse.

They'd been actual _attacks_ in every sense of the word.

Flippy shook his head again. No use dwelling in the past now. He'd have time for stories and memories later.

Walking forward, he leaned in to inspect the bloodstained wall. He was fine now. In actuality blood didn't really bother him anymore. Years of dealing with daily deaths had trained him to be used to blood. If it caught him by surprise, as it just had, it could trigger an attack. But now, it was just a smear of red liquid to him.

And this was certainly odd. This was fresh, yes, but Flippy's instincts told him something was off. And it wasn't just the blood. There was something else that had been nagging him. It was then that he realized how eerily quiet it was. Straightening up, he looked around. He was in one of the main hallways, a long path that ran through one of the many wings of the hospital. But the hallway was totally silent. A chill ran down his spine. It was too damned quiet. There was no noise at all. No beeping of monitors, no talking, no yelling, nothing. It was odd enough that the corridor was devoid of anybeast at all; normally there would be doctors bustling up and down, nurses running from room to room, maybe even a crash cart or two. Or ten.

Happy Tree Town was, after all, a rather violent city.

Now, however, he heard nothing.

* * *

It was dark, very dark. Normally, Cuddles would have been scared by this. Though the little yellow bunny was loathe to admit it, he was afraid of the dark. It was one of those embarrassing secrets, the kind that you never told anyone for fear they'd treat you like a child. Not, of course, that such a thing would have changed anyway. His height, his high-pitched voice, and his "cuteness" (Giggles had added _that_ disgusting word to a list of his attributes) all screamed "child" to the world, fueling the misconception that he was younger than he really was. And in many ways, Cuddles was still a child.

After all, here he was, over twenty years old and still afraid of the dark.

But as he sat, cowering in his present hiding location, it wasn't the dark that set his heart racing. It wasn't the dark that was causing him to shiver violently in fear.

Blindly, Cuddles groped around to feel where he was. Beneath his paws was slick tile, and he could smell cleaning fluid. Forepaws outstretched, he stumbled blindly until he hit his face on something hard and fell to the ground. As he fell, his paws hit cold porcelain, and he realized that in his blind fearful rush, he had ducked into a bathroom.

Outside the bathroom, he heard the grunts and moans of those... _things._ There they were. The creatures whose presence outweighed Cuddles' fear of darkness.

Drawing his knees to his chest, Cuddles shut his eyes and silently prayed the monster's wouldn't get him.

* * *

Flippy cleared his throat. The sound echoed loudly in the silence, making Flippy feel more uneasy than before. No hospital should be this quiet. Quickly, he checked the time on the watch he always wore. Barely past noon._ This damn place ought-a be full of people,'_ he thought.

"Makes no damned sense," he finished out loud.

Quicker now, he walked down the hall, away from the exit sign and towards the waiting rooms. He reached the door, took a deep breath to prepare himself, and pushed the door open.

Flippy could have prepared himself a hundred times over for the scene that met his eyes. As I've said before, blood and gore was not a problem for him if he was ready for it. But nothing could have prepared him for the smell that hit him the moment he opened the door. It was a horrid stench, the kind that made you gag and feel like throwing up. Except Flippy couldn't throw up any more, so it was more like a dry heaving of his stomach. He doubled over, paw over his nose, and gagged noisily. But worse then the actual smell was the fact that Flippy knew exactly what the smell meant. What it was.

It was the stench of death.

Blood. Rotting corpses. Piss. Excrement. When creatures died, their bowels relaxed and let go of all the waste they held. Flippy had seen that before many times. He knew the smell.

He stood up straight and began breathing through his mouth. The feeling of revulsion passed, and he took the time to survey the scene. And what a scene it was.

The waiting room was a large one. At one end was a window behind which usually sat a receptionist (the window was empty now). Along the walls were numerous chairs that the patients would sit in, waiting for the inevitable call to see the doctor.

But now those chairs were filled with corpses.

Flippy counted fifteen in all. Fifteen dead bodies. Some lay on the floor, sprawled in awkward positions as their limbs hardened into rigor mortis. Others sat slumped in the chairs, their bodies stiffening as well.

Fighting revulsion, he walked up to one of the bodies that sat stiffly in one of the chairs that lined the wall. This one was a chipmunk, green in color. Her eyes were turned up in their sockets and stared blankly at the ceiling, indicating that nobody was home. He inspected it closely, trying to determine a cause of death. This in itself was not hard; a large chunk of her throat (a rather necessary part of any living creature's body) was missing, torn out. He leaned in, still breathing through his mouth, to look closer at her neck. Teeth marks visibly lined both sides of the open wound. Flippy grimaced. What sort of animal had done this? He stood up and looked around. All the dead around him sported similar wounds. A few looked like they'd had their hearts removed in a similar fashion. He shuddered. There was only one creature he knew of in the entire world that would do something like this, and that creature was dead. And Flippy didn't really want to think about him right now.

But something else was wrong here._  
(besides all the dead bodies, you mean?)_

"Shut up." He snapped at his mind. Flippy's Little Mind Voice. Flippy's Annoying Backseat Driver. It was always there, weaving itself into his conscious thoughts.

But yes, besides all the dead bodies, something was very wrong. Once again, he looked around at all the stiff bodies. The he realized what it was. Turning around again, he gingerly poked the green chipmunk's arm. It was stiff, alright. Like a tree branch. Well, if a tree branch had fur and was connected to a chipmunk with an extra breathing hole.

But this was all wrong. Bodies didn't go stiff in Happy Tree Town. Hell, bodies didn't stay around long enough to even start rotting. It was all wrong. When you died, your body disappeared, and you woke up sometime later in your stupid little respawn point. That was how it worked.

But this waiting room begged to differ.

"What the hell is going on?" Flippy muttered to himself.

But before he could think about this any further, a sound brought his attention elsewhere.

It was a sniffling sound. Like someone was crying. Flippy turned towards the sound, and found himself facing the receptionist window. Perhaps the window hadn't been as empty as he'd thought. He walked slowly, cautiously over to the window. It sounded like it had come from another animal like him, not some monster that had killed all these creatures, so he spoke up.

"Hello? Anyone there?"

The sniffling grew louder, and he realized that it really was somebody crying. He relaxed and walked over to the window. He couldn't see anyone, so he stood on his tiptoes and peered onto the floor behind the desk. There, cowering in the shadows was a small black cat. She sat, cross-legged and cradling something in her paws. Her back was to him, so he couldn't see much of her. She was rocking back and forth, sobbing quietly.

"Um, hello? Hey?" prodded Flippy. He was weirded out by everything that was going on, and was past being overly polite. He wanted to know what the hell was going on. "Hey, you!"

At this last call, the crying stopped. And the growling started. The cat whipped her upper body around and stared at Flippy through bloodshot eyes. Flippy couldn't help but gasp at what he saw. Her lips were pulled back in a grimace and Flippy clearly saw the splashes of blood along her cheeks. Her teeth were stained red with blood as well. And all along her chest were gashes that looked like they had been self-inflicted. There was a particularly nasty one that went from chest, down around her side and to her buttocks. She stood up and dropped what she had been cradling in her paws. It was a head.

Flippy backed away. He was pretty sure he'd found the killer.

"Oh." was about all he could say.

The cat leaned forward and unsheathed her claws. And then she let loose one of the most unearthly screams Flippy had ever heard. Like a banshee, she howled. It was a piercing and painful sound. Then she lunged through the window, shattering the glass on either side, and dove at Flippy's face.

Battle-hardened instinct kicked in and Flippy dodged quickly out of the way, hearing the swipe of claws and clicking of teeth pierce the air where his head had just been. The cat stumbled, caught off guard, giving Flippy enough time to grab one of the chairs and spin to face her. He held up the chair to protect himself.

He assumed the cat wanted to be cradling his head in her lap as well, and while this might not have bothered him as much before, he couldn't shake the feeling that something very wrong was going on. And not just because some crazed cat was trying to kill him in an uncharacteristically silent hospital. He shot a quick glance at the bodies that littered the floor. Here were dead animals that had not come back. And they certainly looked like they would never come back. That was just wrong. That was not how things worked. But Flippy wasn't going to take chances. He didn't want to die just yet.

The cat leaned low and snarled, and for once Flippy got a good look at her in the light. The gashes he had seen on her chest were much worse than he had first thought, and they weren't just on her chest. Wounds were opened all along the front side of her body, and some were still leaking blood. There was what looked like deep beaver bite marks on her right leg. But for all the injuries she had, the cat didn't seem to be bothered by the pain. Instead, she appeared to be more intent on tearing open several new holes in Flippy.

Flippy held up the chair defensively, still trying to decide what to do. Once more, the cat lunged, claws outstretched. Flippy dodged back again and swung the chair at her arms, trying to ward her off. This did nothing. The cat growled and snarled and screamed those horrid screams. Again she lunged, this time lower and towards his legs. He leaped to the side and slammed the chair down on her head. This put the cat into a daze for a moment. She fell to the floor, twitching.

Making a snap decision, Flippy swung the chair high and pounded one of the legs into her back. Then, with a deft movement, he raised his leg and stomped on the seat, driving the chair leg through the cat, breaking the chair into pieces. Flippy felt the warm wetness of blood on his legs as the cat's back sprayed blood all over his pants. He grimaced and kicked the cat to turn the injury away from him. The cat screamed and rolled away, clutching at her stomach where a wooden chair leg protruded. Flippy backed away towards the opposite wall, waiting for another attack.

But it didn't come.

Instead, the cat took in a deep breath, and let loose a yowl so loud Flippy had winced at the piercing shriek. This seemed to be it's dying breath, as when it's scream had expired, so did the cat's life. With a wet gurgle, she went limp and the only movement that continued was the small dribble of blood that leaked from her stomach.

Flippy sighed and leaned against the wall, his legs weak from the recent adrenaline rush.

But it wasn't over.

In the distance, down one of the many halls that segmented Mercy Hospital, Flippy heard what was apparently some sort of answering scream. Well, it was more like a collective indecipherable yelling. Turning his head to squint down the passageway, he heard the noise again, and realized that it was coming closer. Quite distinctly then, he heard the thundering of hundreds of feet and what sounded like low, guttural grunting and a thousand voices moaning a tuneless dirge. It was as though that final yowl of the now dead cat had called some sort of mob.

For the first time in a long while, Flippy felt true fear. He didn't know what sort of creatures were barreling down the passageway en masse but he had a feeling it wasn't something he wanted to meet head on. He turned and ran back the way he came, all the while hearing those hundreds of feet following him. He couldn't see them, and he was pretty sure he didn't want to.

Picking up the pace, he ran down corridor after corridor at a full sprint, towards what he knew was the exit.

This simply hadn't been his day.

* * *

Cuddles sat, head tucked in his knees, in a bathroom in the hospital. Rocking back and forth, he tried to soothe himself. Outside he could hear the moaning and groaning of those things that had chased him. He had no idea what was going on.

In the distance, he heard a high pitched yowling, and the creatures outside the door seemed to hear it to. They stopped their moaning. Moments later, Cuddles heard them snarl and run off.

He waited a few more minutes before working up the courage to walk towards the door. Pressing his ear to the bathroom door, he listened for any sound.

There was none.

He cracked the door and looked outside. Seeing nothing, save a few bloodstains on the wall, he quietly slipped out the door and looked around. It was totally silent.

Sighing with relief, his heart slowing, he turned and ran towards the exit, following the green signs.


End file.
